The Future of Labor

One wonders if the deterioration of the labor market position of
less-skilled workers might lead to a more "Confucian" arrangement in the
United States, in which shared cultural practices are used to mitigate
sharper economic inequality. The increasing cultural heterogeneity of
U.S. society suggests otherwise.

Another possibility is that skilled workers will continue to consume
more in-person services, thus creating an incentive to invest in the
noncognitive skills of the future labor force. In a postmodern economy,
most "needs" are invented. An abundance of relatively low-cost labor
will presumably lead to the consumption of more labor-intensive
services, just as the influx of less-skilled Mexican workers has kept
the agricultural sector in the arid Southwest afloat. The problem, of
course, is that the market wage for this kind of work might prove
unacceptably low, as Greenspun suggests, thus creating pressure for
expensive forms of redistribution.

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